Category: Personal Injury

Many people think back to their high-school days with fondness. If you were fortunate, they were the days of school sporting events, dances and cruising with friends. Maybe you even have specific memories of taking a field trip and joking around on the school bus. 

Now, imagine yourself or maybe your own teenagers enjoying the adventure of a school bus trip when disaster hits. The fun and innocent nature of the school experience gets completely turned upside down because of an 18-wheeler that loses control. A truck crashes into the bus and leaves more wreckage, injuries and even death in its wake.

This story is not a hypothetical, as the Texas community of Mt. Pleasant has learned following a recent tragic truck accident involving its students and their coaches.

Last week late at night, a semi-truck was driving the wrong way on the road. It drove into the path of the school bus. Though the driver of the bus tried to get the vehicle and its student passengers away to safety that night, he couldn’t avoid the crash entirely. The collision occurred and went further than that singular crash. Another car with another coach inside of it was hit, too. 

As a result of the crash, 18 students were reportedly injured. The female coach driving behind the bus is one of two people who died in the Texas truck accident. The other person killed in the wreck was the truck driver. But will his death limit what authorities can identify as the cause of the severe traffic accident?

In truck accident cases, investigators tend to look at some common possible causes. In this case, sources report the truck was seen driving erratically. Such behavior and the act of driving the wrong way on the road, combined with the fact that it was late at night, could point to the possibility that the trucker was sleeping at the wheel or otherwise too tired to drive. 

Fatigued driving can be just as dangerous and deadly as driving under the influence, and it is not as uncommon as one might think. Commercial drivers face pressures from their employers that can push them to drive more than they should without getting the breaks that are required.

While a truck accident is most definitely a personal and tragic matter for the unsuspecting victims involved, on the other end of the legal equation is a trucking company. As a business, the trucker’s employer will want to protect itself from the potential financial impact of personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits.

This means that victims of an 18-wheeler accident need to work with a personal injury lawyer who will work to protect their best interests as soon as possible. Talking and agreeing to any sort of deal with any party before working with an attorney is a bad idea.

There are many things that can go wrong when driving. You can encounter an intoxicated driver or a speeder, driving far too fast. There are fatigued drivers and those that are distracted by texting or some type of electronic device. One of the most frightening is the wrong way driver. When you are on a controlled-access highway, such as Interstate 20, 30, 35 or US 75 in the Dallas area, such an encounter could be deadly.

The design of an interstate-type road adds to the risk, as once a driver heads down an off ramp, motorists in the lane traveling the correct direction have few options to safely avoid such a driver, as there may be no exits available. While there is little that can be changed in the overall design of these roads, there are many enhancements that can be made to lessen the likelihood of these drivers and the devastating crashes they cause.

Dallas and Tarrant Counties have some the highest prevalence of wrong way drivers in Texas, and in 2015, more than 1,000 crashes in Texas killed 65 motorists. While drunk driving is a primary factor, some studies have found that older drivers can be confused at night, leading to wrong-way incidents.

A local Dallas TV station reported that recommendations had been made for a decade on methods to prevent these crashes, but TxDOT had failed to implement any of them in the Dallas area. That investigation seems to have prompted some movement, and TxDOT has begun to install improved signs and other warning systems that could help prevent wrong-way drivers.

These drivers are often intoxicated and may be disoriented by near an entrance or exit ramps. The TxDOT is installing new LED warning signs on some ramps that will sense a wrong way driver and flash intensely to warn them. The sensors will also alert the TxDOT traffic command center to place alert notices on the light-up message signs located on the highways to warn other drivers. The system also alerts the police to the occurrence.

Other changes involve “wrong way” signs that are mounted lower to the ground, where the will show up in headlights. California found the use of these signs helped to reduce these crashes.